Session Leaders
Session leaders include senior professors from Smith School of Business and knowledgeable experts from industry. These outstanding teachers are constantly in touch with today's business world through real-world business experience, Board memberships and their own consulting practices.
Working as a licensed public accountant and audit partner, my professional interests were always broad and encompassed the provision of auditing, accounting and taxation services. I have frequently acted as an advisor on issues relating to governance, strategy development and mergers & acquisitions. Having worked in several KPMG offices, I served clients drawn from a range of industries including wholesale and retail, manufacturing and processing, distribution and transportation, tourism and hospitality, life sciences and software. In the Not-for-Profit sector, I worked with municipalities, public utilities, housing corporations, children’s aid societies and small charitable organizations in the social services field.
In addition to my client service responsibilities, I proudly served as chair of the firm’s KPMG Enterprise Learning Council, a group of KPMG partners tasked with the development and delivery of a learning program for the firm’s staff advising private company clients.
Having served as the Managing Partner of KPMG’s Kingston office, I retired from the firm in 2014. I now teach part-time at Queen’s (Smith School of Business FT MBA, Graduate Diploma in Business and Executive Education) and serve on the Board of Directors of a large private company. I also act as a consultant to a couple of private companies and serve on the investment committee of a private foundation.
Goce Andrevski is an Associate Professor and Distinguished Faculty Fellow of Strategy at Smith School of Business, Queen's University, Canada. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky and teaches courses in competitive strategy, dynamic strategy execution, and business and corporate strategy across undergraduate, graduate, and MBA programs.
His research focuses on competitive strategy, competitive dynamics, alliance networks, and diversity management. Goce’s work has been published in leading academic journals, including the Academy of Management Review, Information Systems Research, Journal of Management, Journal of Personality, Journal of Business Research, and Strategic Organization.
Goce has received numerous accolades for his teaching and research, including the 2008 Provost’s Outstanding Teaching Award (University of Kentucky), the 2023 Distinguished Teaching Fellowship (Queen’s University), the 2009 Best Doctoral Student Paper Award (Academy of Management), the 2010 Best Published Paper Award (Information Systems Research), the 2011 Dorothy Harlow Best Paper Award (Academy of Management), the 2022 Best Paper Prize for Advances in Strategic Management (British Academy of Management), and the 2022 Best Proposal Finalist (Strategic Management Society). His research has also been supported by SSHRC grants from the Government of Canada, totaling $431,721.
In addition to his academic achievements, Goce has extensive consulting experience in business strategy and public policy. He regularly advises executives from diverse sectors, including the automotive industry, professional sports organizations, and government institutions. His expertise helps leaders address complex strategic challenges, enhance organizational performance, and develop innovative solutions to policy-related and business issues.
CvB & Associates was founded by Christopher von Baeyer, who began his research and professional practice over 35 years ago as an undergraduate at Harvard University. He has since developed an international reputation as a thought leader and expert practitioner in the field of Leadership Presence. Currently based in Toronto, he has designed and delivered arts-based programming in leadership and professional communication for hundreds of clients across North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, including BASF, Dolby, Duke Corporate Education, Rogers Communication, Enbridge, Société Générale, Deloitte & Touche, Boston Consulting Group, the Canadian government and the Hearst Corporation. He has served as a consultant and contributing partner to the Queen's/Smith Professional Development faculty for over 15 years.
Over the course of his career, he has coached thousands of men and women in the art of leadership presence, emotional intelligence, interpersonal communication, Shakespeare, and voice. As a founding principal at The Ariel Group, the industry-leading international corporate training skills firm from Boston, he served as VP of Client Solutions where he managed the company’s highest revenue-generating clients for over 10 years. He has taught at the Harvard Business School, Emerson College, Boston College, the Kellogg Graduate School of Management in Chicago and the Columbia University Senior Executive Program in New York. He has served on the faculty and Advisory Board for Leadership Development at the Banff Centre in Alberta, as well as the board of the Centre for Playback Theatre in New York. In 2014 he returned from a two-year work sabbatical travelling and living between Hong Kong, Shanghai, Bangkok, Bali Province, Indonesia and Berlin, Germany.
Chris is deeply committed to employing the arts as a creative tool for promoting dialogue on issues of social and civic concern. He recently completed an intensive training with Al Gore to become certified as a member of the Climate Reality Leaderships Corps. For 10 years he served as the Artistic Director for Toronto Playback Theatre, which he founded with the mission of providing improvisational and audience-interactive theatre for diverse communities in the Toronto area. He currently serves as Chairman of the Board of the Dharma Centre of Canada, one of the oldest meditation centres in North America. He holds a BA in English and American literature from Harvard University and an M.A. in Theatre Arts and Vocal Communication from Lesley University Graduate School. He currently resides in Toronto and is the proud father of a university-aged son.
Abayomi Baiyere is an Associate Professor & Distinguished Research Fellow of Digital Technology at Smith School of Business; a Research Affiliate at MIT Sloan Center for Information Systems Research; and a visiting scholar at the University of Turku. Before joining academia, he worked for companies such as SAP, ABN AMRO (Dialogues Incubator), and as an entrepreneur.
His research looks at digitalization issues from an organizational perspective - with a focus on digital transformation, digital/disruptive innovations as well as digital work. His research takes a design science and qualitative methods orientation, among others. He is currently among scholars leading the charge to chart a path for digital X-themed research in the information systems discipline and beyond.
He currently serves as an associate editor of Information Systems Journal - ISJ and on the editorial board of Information and Organization. He serves (or has served) as a guest editor on special issues in several journals. He currently leads the Digital Disruption and Digital Transformation Special Interest Group of ISPIM, and he leads the “Theory of Digital Theme” in the digitalization department of CBS. He also holds a leadership position in the IFPI 9.1 group. He has served as an executive member of the OCIS (now CTO) division of the Academy of Management (AoM), among other leadership roles.
His work has been accepted in journals such as Information Systems Research (ISR), Journal of the Association for Information Systems (JAIS), European Journal of Information Systems (EJIS), Technology Forecasting and Social Change (TFSC), and California Management Review (CMR), among others. Some of his published works have been recognized with awards and nominations in journals such as Journal of the Association for Information Systems (JAIS – best paper honorable mention in 2021), and European Journal of Information Systems (EJIS – best paper in 2020), as well as in conferences such as AoM OCIS division (2020 & 2017); ECIS (2020); MCIS (2018); and ICIS (2017).
An authority on social and economic policy issues, Keith Banting is the author of Poverty, Politics and Policy and The Welfare State and Canadian Federalism. He is an editor and co-author of another dozen books dealing with public policy, including most recently Federalism and Health Policy: A Comparative Perspective on Multi-Level Governance. He currently holds the Queen’s Research Chair in Public Policy. Professor Banting served as Director of the School of Policy Studies from 1993 to 2003. Prior to that appointment, he served as Associate Dean of Graduate Studies and Research at Queen’s University. In 1983-85, he was a Research Coordinator for the Royal Commission on the Economic Union and Development Prospects for Canada. In 1986-92, he was a member of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and in 1990 was elected vice-president of the Council. In 2005, Dr. Banting was invested as a member of the Order of Canada.
Julian is the author of The Science of Leadership: Lessons From Research for Organizational Leaders, which was published by Oxford University Press (New York) in January, 2014. His research interests focus on the nature and development of transformational leadership and employee well-being, and he is also the author of well over 200 research articles and book chapters, and the author or editor of several books, including Employment, Stress and Family Functioning (1990, Wiley & Sons); The Union and Its Members: A Psychological Approach (1992, Oxford University Press); Changing Employment Relations: Behavioral and Social Perspectives (1995, American Psychological Association); Young Workers (1999, American Psychological Association); and The Psychology of Workplace Safety (2004, American Psychological Association). He is also co-editor of the Handbook of Workplace Violence (2006, SAGE Publications), and senior editor of both the Handbook of Work Stress (2005), Handbook of Organizational Behaviour (2008), all published by SAGE, The Psychology of Green Organizations (2015) and Work and Sleep: Research Insights for the Workplace (2016), both published by Oxford University Press).
Julian was formerly the editor of the American Psychological Association's Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, served as the chair of the American Psychological Association's Task Force on Workplace Violence in 2001-2, and was the chairperson of the Advisory Council on Occupational Health and Safety to the Ontario Minister of Labour from 1989-1991.
Julian is a Fellow for the Royal Society of Canada, the Society of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, the European Academy of Occupational Health Psychology, the Association for Psychological Science, and the Canadian Psychological Association. Julian was the recipient in 2016 of the Distinguished Contributions to Industrial and Organizational Psychology by the C-SIOP Division of the Canadian Psychological Association.
Julian was named one of the 2020 recipients of the Distinguished University Professor designation, Queen’s University’s highest research-related honour. MacLean's magazine named Julian as one of Queen's University's most popular professors in 1996. Julian received the National Post's "Leaders in Business Education" award in 2001 and Queen's University's Award for Excellence in Graduate Student Supervision in 2008.
Julian received his Ph.D in 1979 from the University of the Witwatersrand, in Johannesburg, South Africa, where he subsequently taught in the Psychology Department. He joined Queen's University in 1984, initially teaching in the Department of Psychology. Julian moved to the School of Business in 1994; and served as the Associate Dean with responsibility for the Ph.D, M.Sc and Research programs in the School of Business from 1997-2011.
Cara Barrineau has an extensive background in communications, business, and the arts. She brings over 15 years of coaching experience, 11 years of virtual experience and 23 years of professional acting experience to her role as a trainer and coach. She is passionate about creating a supportive and challenging environment to help each participant build awareness and take risks.
Cara has worked extensively with a wide range of business segments, including technology, entertainment, government, and the financial industry. Select clients include Executive Education Programs of Harvard & Columbia, Federal Reserve Bank, CIA, American Express, Citibank, IBM, Oliver Wyman, Johnson & Johnson, Hearst, Proctor & Gamble, Disney, Time Warner.
Peggy has dedicated her life to training excellence. Her passion for developing people, proven expertise, vast training experience, and engaging style make her the perfect trainer to deliver programs to demanding, senior-level audiences. With more than 20 years of corporate training experience, Peggy has delivered hundreds of programs to leading corporations across numerous industries and she consistently receives outstanding reviews by inspiring deep commitment in those she coaches.
Christina is a Human Resources professional with over 15 years of experience in both in the private and public sectors. As Vice-President of Human Resources for a manufacturing company with clients around the globe, Christina provided strategic advice on how to optimize and grow business in foreign countries. In the public sector, she has helped organizations to capitalize on increasing diversity based on the changing demographics of Canada's workforce and how to adapt all HR processes to support and engage cross-cultural talent.
In addition to the cultural matters, she has worked with executives and leaders across various industries to help them expand their leadership strengths, elicit staff engagement and foster high-performance teams. As part of this work, she's been actively sought after to support troubled groups and individuals who are underperforming or causing problems as the result of interpersonal conflict.
Christina previously taught for the University of Saskatchewan Edwards School of Business, and she now teaches cross-cultural management for Queen's University Faculty of Law, as well as Queen's Executive Education.
Christina has an undergraduate degree in commerce, and two graduate degrees in international business focused on leadership and organizational strategy. For her Master's thesis, Christina conducted primary research into what types of organizational efforts would make a difference in engaging employees from various cultures in higher degrees of organizational commitment. This research was focused on healthcare, where Christina has spent the majority of her career.
A world in which technology enables businesses to prosper, employees to thrive, and a culture for driving results to flourish is the vision behind Kathryn Brohman’s thought leadership in sustainable execution.
An Associate professor at Smith School of Business, Queen’s University, Kathryn has co-authored several books that focus on how today’s organizations can navigate business practices to drive short-term results without compromising long-term success. Her most recent book entitled SHIFT: A New Mindset for Sustainable Execution presents results from her work with over 750+ organizations that helped translate strategy into action. The book provides a pragmatic approach to identifying salient execution barriers, filling gaps to stabilize an execution backbone, and removing distractions to seamlessly adapt to change.
Since arriving at Queen’s University in 2003, Kathryn has pioneered programs in Strategy Execution and Digital Transformation across MBA and executive programs. She has worked with hundreds of organizations in North America to translate strategy into action. Kathryn has received multiple funding grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) as well as the Ontario Research Foundation and published her work in premier journals including MIS Quarterly, Decision Sciences, Harvard Business Review, MIS Quarterly Executive, and Communications of the ACM.
Dr. Lobna Chérif holds the position of Chair in Resilience at the Royal Military College of Canada (RMC) and serves as an Associate Professor in the Department of Military Psychology and Leadership. She is also the founding Director of the Resilience Plus Program. Dr. Chérif earned her Ph.D. in Psychology from Laval University (Québec, Québec) and holds certifications as a Positive Psychology Practitioner and Resiliency Trainer from The Flourishing Center in New York. Additionally, she is a certified Professional and Personal Coach from Concordia University in Montréal and a certified Mindfulness-Based Strengths Practitioner from the VIA Institute on Character.
Dr. Chérif has led numerous international and national workshops and webinars on the science of positive psychology. Her current research focuses on mindfulness, character strengths, resilience, and accomplishment, exploring practical applications to enhance leaders' well-being and performance.
Throughout her academic career, Dr. Chérif has received several prestigious awards, including the Canadian Psychological Association’s Excellence Award for her doctoral thesis. She has also been honoured with commendations such as the Honourable John Matheson Academic Leadership Award at RMC and the Canadian Armed Forces Chief of the Defence Staff Coin (2023).
In addition to her professional work, Dr. Chérif volunteers her time consulting for various community organizations and supporting her daughter's award-winning non-profit organization, Gnome for a Home, which is dedicated to assisting those experiencing homelessness.
Barry Cross is an expert and thought leader in innovation, execution and operations strategy. He joined Smith School of Business after nearly 20 years in the automotive and manufacturing sectors with Magna Autosystems and DuPont, where he led many key strategic initiatives, including nearly 30 program launches in North America, Asia, Latin America and Europe.
Barry speaks and consults widely in the areas of Lean Innovation, Strategy, Projects and Execution, enabling organizations to create sustainable value for their customers. He is the bestselling author of three books, including Simple: Killing Complexity for a Lean and Agile Organization, and several Most Read articles.
Shai Dubey teaches courses in negotiations, cross-cultural management, ethics, domestic and international business law and entrepreneurship.
Shai earned his Bachelor's Degree from the University of Toronto and his Law Degree from Queen's University. Shai is also a graduate of the aviation Flight Technology Program at Seneca College.
After graduating from Seneca College in 1984, he began his working career as a commercial pilot. In 1985 he founded and ran both an executive aircraft charter company and a flight training school based in Toronto. After selling this company, Shai worked as an aviation consultant providing strategic and regulatory advice to Canadian and foreign clients. He practiced law on Bay Street and then ran a global company prior to joining Queen’s.
An exceptional workshop facilitator and trainer, Karyn Garossino has considerable experience in coaching for challenging situations. Her resilience, poise and skill under pressure were built from the ground up. Karyn first learned these skills as an athlete then deepened her theoretical understanding of them through academic study in Psychology and Education. Karyn excelled in the intense world of high performance sport as a competitive figure skater. Her career spanned ten years of international competition, including five world championships and culminated as a 1988 Olympian and Canadian champion in 1989. Her experience as a national level coach, executive coach and now trainer, focuses on application – helping others deal with challenges that require skill and poise under pressure while still getting results.
Catherine is a sought-after Facilitator, Executive Coach, and Learning Designer, with over twenty years of successful business practice. She has held senior leadership positions at large and boutique management consulting and training firms based in Toronto, Canada, where her roles involved working closely with leaders of Fortune 500 companies to assess, develop, and implement strategic training initiatives to drive performance. A dynamic leader and learning solutions provider, Catherine offers a fresh and innovative approach to training, engagement and sustainment. She leverages an extensive creative background as a professional actor, writer and director to serve her business clients.
Catherine has served as Senior Manager, Learning and Enablement at Optimus SBR; Director of Learning at The Bottom-Line Group/ myPractice; and Director of Learning at e-Roleplay. She is a Facilitator and Executive Coach for The Ariel Group, Kearney Management Consulting, and Carol Lempert Speaking. Catherine is certified as a Presence Coach, and in Leading with Emotional Intelligence. She has received designations for Principles in Adult Learning from George Brown College and Leadership and Coaching Fundamentals from the Co-Active Training Institute.
She graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in New York with a BFA, majoring in Theater and Psychology, and earned a Dramatic Arts Certificate from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London, England. Catherine’s career as a creative artist encompassed theatre, film, television and radio. She co-founded the award-winning alternative theatre group Stiletto Company. She taught acting on faculty at Sheridan College, Toronto Metropolitan University and Seneca College.
Chantal Hébert is a national affairs columnist with The Toronto Star and a guest columnist for Le Devoir. She is also a regular contributor to the weekly “At Issue” panel on the CBC’s National News. Ms. Hébert served as parliamentary bureau chief for La Presse and Le Devoir in Ottawa, and as a political reporter for Radio-Canada. She is a Fellow of the Asia-Pacific Foundation, the 2005 recipient of APEX’s Public Service Award, and the 2006 recipient of the Hyman Solomon award for excellence in journalism and public policy.
Peter Jensen is the author of The Inside Edge, Ignite The Third Factor and Thriving in a 24/7 World, the founder of Third Factor, and a longstanding instructor at Smith School of Business at Queen's University. A dynamic speaker with a Ph.D. in Sport Psychology, Peter has attended 9 Olympic Games as a member of the Canadian team and helped over 70 athletes medal. With the world of Olympic sport as a laboratory, he has developed a deep understanding of what it takes to be a successful leader of high performers. Peter is a renowned innovator—bringing coaching and personal high performance to corporations worldwide. As a teacher, Peter has the power to invigorate audiences through his compelling use of humour, personal experiences and concrete, actionable content.
Murray Lei is an Assistant Professor of Management Analytics and a Distinguished Research Fellow at Smith School of Business, Queen's University. His research focuses on developing data-driven frameworks that enable companies to make dynamic decisions under uncertainty. Additionally, he investigates how data-driven analytics can be aligned with societal values, particularly in the areas of privacy, fairness, and sustainability.
Murray’s research has been published in top-tier peer-reviewed academic journals and is supported by various funding agencies. His achievements have been recognized through multiple awards, including the New Researcher Achievement Award. He has collaborated with leading global tech companies such as Alibaba, Instacart, Flipkart, Staples, and Oracle Retail Labs, where he has contributed to developing real-time, large-scale analytics solutions.
Murray’s teaching interests span Business Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, Operations Management, Supply Chain Management, and Revenue Management. He has extensive experience teaching these subjects across various academic levels, including professional graduate programs (such as Master's in Management Analytics), research-based graduate programs (M.Sc. and Ph.D.), and undergraduate courses.
Elspeth Murray has served as the Associate Dean - MBA and Master’s Programs from 2012-2022 and has been a professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at Smith School of Business since 1996. She also holds the CIBC Fellowship in Entrepreneurship, and founded Smith's Centre for Business Venturing. She is the Director of the Centre for Entrepreneurship, Innovation & Social Impact. Prior to joining Smith, she worked in industry for 7 years for several firms including IBM, and Canadian Tire. As an integral part of her work in the strategy and new venture fields, Dr. Murray specializes in the management of change. In 2002, she co-authored a best-selling book, Fast Forward: Organizational Change in 100 Days, Oxford University Press, with Dr. Peter Richardson. She has recently co-developed (with Dr. David Saunders) the Analytics Climate Assessment Tool (ACAT), which is used to assess organizations technological capacity, skill sets, and analytics culture. Current research is focused on best practices in leading and managing change to create an analytics culture.
Dr. Murray teaches on many MBA and Executive Education programs, and consults widely with a diversity of firms including BMW, Detour Gold, Wawanesa Insurance, Versacold Logistics and the Auditor General for Canada. She serves as a Director for several firms and is an advisor to several start-ups and CEO's. Dr. Murray received an undergraduate degree in computer science and mathematics, and an MBA, both from Queen's University. Her doctorate in Strategy and Management Information Systems was completed at the Richard Ivey School of Business.
Eddy is a Professor of Equity and Inclusion in Business at Smith. His research focuses on managing diversity for organizational competitiveness, the future of work, and managing across generations. He has edited and published 6 books and more than 100 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters. In a recent Stanford study, he is identified in the top 2% of the most cited scientists in Economics & Business. He has been featured in popular media outlets in Canada and the U.S. such as the CBC, the Globe and Mail, the Financial Post, BBC Worklife, NPR, Vox, and the Wall Street Journal. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion.
Dave Paradi has been recognized by the media and his clients as a presentation expert. He has authored ten books on effective PowerPoint presentations and his ideas have appeared in publications around the world. Dave has been recognized by Microsoft with the Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Award for his contributions to the PowerPoint and Excel communities. His articles and videos on virtual presenting have been viewed over 4.8 million times and liked over 17,000 times on YouTube. He is a highly rated conference speaker and has delivered more than 500 customized training sessions around the world in the last 25 years.
Dr. Raver is an Associate Professor and E. Marie Shantz Faculty Fellow in Organizational Behaviour at Smith School of Business, and is also cross-appointed to the Department of Psychology. She is an authority on interpersonal relations and group processes at work, with a specific emphasis upon the ways in which employees support each other and build high-performance environments (e.g., helping, promoting learning) versus engage in counterproductive actions that undermine each other (e.g., harassment, bullying, relationship conflicts).
Professor Raver's scholarship in this area has been internationally recognized through best paper awards from the Academy of Management and from the International Association of Conflict Management (IACM), and her work on these topics has been published in prestigious outlets including the Academy of Management Journal and the Academy of Management Review. A second area of Professor Raver's expertise pertains to workplace diversity and cultural differences, where her current focus is on the integration of diverse or dissimilar employees into work groups and organizations. Her work has also included cross-cultural investigations of conflict processes and societal control systems. Her scholarship in this domain has also earned awards, including the Outstanding Article Award from IACM, and has been published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, Human Resource Management Review, and in several book chapters. Professor Raver has worked with a number of organizations from both the private and public sectors in the U.S. and Canada. She is also regularly invited to speak about building positive organizational cultures, teams, workplace harassment, conflict, and diversity to associations of academics, policy makers, and employees. Her work has been profiled in media outlets including The Globe & Mail, the National Post, and the Chicago Tribune. Professor Raver teaches courses in human resource management, organizational behaviour, and group processes that span academic programs (Commerce, MBA, MSc, PhD). She is also actively involved in professional service, including serving on the Editorial Board of Negotiation and Conflict Management Journal and acting as an ad-hoc reviewer for numerous top-tier journals.
Matt Reesor is a communications expert who has helped hundreds of leaders at top organizations to sharpen their messaging. Since 2013, he has held a professor appointment at Smith School of Business, Queen’s University and designed numerous Masters and MBA level business communication courses. In addition, Matt was approached to design the highly successful Communicating With Impact program within Queen’s Executive Education (QEE) which he continues to deliver multiple times throughout the year. Matt has created custom communications programs for a growing list of clients including, British Columbia Centre for Disease Control, Canada Life, Canada Post, The Canadian Olympic Committee, CIBC Asset Management, Homestead Land Holdings, EY (Consulting), Kellogg’s Canada, the NHL Alumni Association and various government departments and ministries. Prior to teaching at Smith, he spent his early career in Japan as a junior faculty member at Nagoya University of Business and Commerce where he conducted academic research and published the bestselling textbook, Tell Me More: Effective Communication Strategies for the Japanese Student with MacMillan Publishers. In addition to his teaching and consulting duties, Matt served as the Director of the Full-time MBA program at Smith School of Business from 2016-2023.
Douglas Reid is an authority on corporate strategy, and has been widely quoted in the media. As a researcher, he specializes in inter-company alliance dynamics and large alliance evolution. Prior to joining Smith School of Business, he was vice president at Burson-Marsteller, an international consulting firm. He recently concluded six years of service as a director of Candela Energy, and is an active advisor to several companies including Bell Canada, Ontario Securities Commission, Canada Post, Shoppers Drug Mart and Royal and Sun Alliance.
Richard Richards is originally from the UK and currently lives in Spain. He has lived and worked outside the UK (Germany, Kuwait, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong, Nicaragua) for most of the last 45 years of which 23 were in the USA (Chicago and Boston). He carries both UK and US passports and his rich, overseas experiences have given him a deep appreciation for the world and its many peoples. While almost all his paid work is with people at the top of the world’s pyramid, his spirit gravitates to those at the foundation, or to those who actively include them. He coaches and facilitates in English and in Spanish.
Richard has worked in all four roles of the typical client/training provider relationship: client, consultant, designer, and facilitator. As a client, he spent almost 20 years working for Hyatt International, in Human Resources and Learning and Development. He subsequently had his own training and consulting practice. That experience, and his graduate work at DePaul University, led to him to work as Vice President of Learning Design for an experiential training company, before branching out again in his own consulting practice.
Along the way, he studied improvisation at Second City in Chicago, spent two years teaching at a leadership institute on the border of Honduras in Nicaragua, and has worked as a professional actor in the US on stage, in voice-over and in film. The latter was the inspiration for his MA in Applied Learning and still informs much of his approach in working experientially with clients.
As a coach and facilitator, he focuses on those aspects of leadership that can sometimes be overlooked in the tactical demands of meeting targets, solving problems, and delivering strategic outcomes in an ever more rapidly moving world. That is, an executive’s personal and leadership presence, essential to inspiring and motivating their colleagues, shareholders, employees and other key stakeholders.
He is equally at home working with clients and participants in-person or virtually. He brings the same passion, energy and integrity to virtual instructor-led trainings (or VILTs) as he does to an in-person classroom, creating valuable, co-created learning experiences.
He has facilitated and designed leadership and communication workshops for clients all over the world and across many industries. This has included financial services companies (Citi, American Express, The Acumen Fund, Wellington Management), pharmaceuticals (Abbott, Bayer, IDEXX), technology (Accenture, Cognizant, Nos, Stripe), universities (Duke, Harvard, Bath, IHEID, Darden) and consulting firms (Boston Consulting, Oliver Wyman), among others.
Peter Richardson has been a faculty member of the School of Business for 37 years. He teaches both introductory and advanced strategy courses in the School of Business on the Executive MBA programs and on a number of the School’s one and three week Continuing Education programs.
Together with Elspeth Murray, Peter has authored a book, entitled Fast Forward: Organizational Change in 100 Days, published by the Oxford University Press in 2002. An accompanying Guide was published early in 2003. Through his research and associated consulting activities, he has developed a unique concept of Strategy as Action, and has written several papers on this topic. During his 30-plus years at Queen’s University, Peter has authored over 90 papers and case studies on strategic management. In his previous book, Cost Containment: The Ultimate Strategic Advantage, one of the few books written on cost improvement, Peter described a novel strategic approach to cost improvement that has been adopted in many organizations in both the public and private sectors. At present, Peter is exploring the impact of the increasing demand for speed in business, which he believes has profound implications for organization change, strategy implementation, risk management and organization processes.
Peter consults widely with both public and private sector organizations, working closely for extended periods with senior executives on strategy development and deployment. Corporate clients have included Codelco, Vale, Anglo-American Corporation, Alcoa, BHP Billiton, Barrick Gold, Bell Canada, CIBC, CIBC-Mellon, De Beers Canada, Ivanhoe Mines, Ivanplats, Redpath Mining, Quadra Chemicals, Gibson Energy, and Xerox. In the Public Sector, clients have included the Supreme Court of Canada, The Office of the Auditor General for Canada, The Surveyor General of Canada, Health Canada, Natural Resources Canada and Health Canada. He has also been retained as a consultant on more than 20 major international mining projects including the successful development and construction of the Collahuasi copper mine in Chile which is to-date the world’s largest and highest single mining project, and the Victor Diamond Mine in Canada – designated globally as the ‘Mine of the Year in 2009’.
Peter has also carried out strategic planning assignments for a number of Associations including the Professional Engineers of Ontario (PEO), the Association of Ontario Land Surveyors, The Consejo Minero de Chile, the Insurance Brokers Association of Canada, the Zinc Association, and the Mining Association of Canada.
A former Canadian diplomat, Mr. Robertson is Vice President and Fellow at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute and hosts its regular Global Exchange podcast. He is an Executive Fellow at the University of Calgary's School of Public Policy and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University. Mr. Robertson sits on the advisory councils of the Johnson Shoyama School of Public Policy, Conference of Defence Associations Institute, North American Research Partnership, and the Sir Winston Churchill Society of Ottawa. He is an Honorary Captain (Royal Canadian Navy) assigned to the Strategic Communications Directorate. He is a member of the Deputy Minister of International Trade's NAFTA Advisory Council and the North American Forum. He writes on foreign affairs for The Globe and Mail and he is a frequent contributor to other media.
His research focuses on team motivation/team leadership, and on helping behaviors/cooperative work behaviors and has been published in journals such as the Academy of Management Journal, American Psychologist, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Management, Journal of Organizational Behavior, and Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.
Matthias has taught classes on Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management to undergraduate students, MBA students, and doctoral students. He has also served as a lecturer on leadership in executive education programs at the National University of Singapore and Harvard Business School Publishing. Prior to joining Smith School of Business, Matthias worked as an assistant professor at the National University of Singapore. Matthias completed his Ph.D. in Organizational Behaviour under the guidance of Prof. John R. Hollenbeck at Michigan State University.
He also holds an MBA from the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland. Before embarking on his academic career, Matthias worked for Kienbaum Management Consultants as assistant to the CEO and consultant. In his work for Kienbaum, Matthias consulted organizations on Strategic HRM issues and on realigning / reorganizing their HRM.
Janice Gross Stein is the Belzberg Professor of Conflict Management in the Department of Political Science and the Director of the Munk School for Global Affairs at the University of Toronto. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and an Honorary Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is the co-author, with Eugene Lang, of the prize-winning The Unexpected War: Canada in Kandahar. She was the Massey Lecturer in 2001 and a Trudeau Fellow. She was awarded the Molson Prize by the Canada Council for an outstanding contribution by a social scientist to public debate. She is a member of the Order of Canada and the Order of Ontario. Dr. Stein currently serves as Co-Chair of the International Programs Committee on the Board of Care Canada.
With a unique ability to present technical topics in an easy-to-understand and inspiring way, Steve is a sought-after professor and AI expert at Queen’s University’s Smith School of Business. He leads both introductory and expert-level courses on multiple aspects of AI in undergraduate, graduate and executive education programs. He has been selected by students in the Master of Management Analytics as MMA Professor of the Year for the last three years running.
Holding PhD, MSc, and BSc degrees in Computer Science, Steve’s research focuses on analytics, machine learning, and natural language processing. His work has been published in leading journals including IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Empirical Software Engineering, and others. In recognition of his work in the analytics and AI space, he was awarded a prestigious Scotiabank Scholar research grant.
Beyond teaching and research, Steve has run a big data startup company and conducted industrial operations research at Raytheon, a major U.S. defense contractor and commercial electronics company. He regularly consults with a wide range of organizations on the application of AI for best business outcomes.
Mr. Van Ness has over 25 years of experience as a consultant, leadership/executive coach and master facilitator. He is a certified Psychosynthesis Life Coach.
With a unique background in the use of theatre, storytelling and action methods for organizational change and leadership development, Tim has designed and delivered distinctive programs for clients across diverse industries including consumer products, financial services, health care, higher education, manufacturing, energy and technology. His work has helped such valued organizations as IBM, Cisco Systems, Domtar, Bristol Myers-Squibb, Liberty Mutual, Merrill Lynch, and numerous other innovative corporations, health care institutions, organizations of higher learning, non-profits and family businesses.
Tim is a 35-year veteran of Playback Theatre, an original form of improvisational theatre based on the enactment of personal story. An accredited trainer for the Centre for Playback Theatre (CPT), Tim has performed with, founded, consulted to and coached Playback companies in 5 countries, and has served as a strategic advisor to the board of the CPT.
He has travelled the globe coaching and teaching leadership, communication and executive
presence at NASA, KKR, P&G, BCG, the CIA, Google, The US Federal Reserve, American Express, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and many others.
Tim has been a visiting professor at Antioch (Keene, NH), New York University and the Stockholm School of Economics, and has taught for Executive Education programs at Harvard, Columbia & Duke Universities, UVA’s Darden School of Business and Queen’s College’s Smith School of Business. He has also served on the boards of several non-profits.
Once a music teacher in the Boston Public Schools, Mr. Van Ness weaves his experience as an actor, director, improvisor, educator, storyteller, business leader, and classically trained musician to provide each client a unique experience specifically suited to their goals.
